Death's Door

Thirty-two

‘It’s just as well we had that slap-up meal in La Potinière last night,’ said Paula Viareggio, ‘and the bacon rolls for breakfast, for the way you looked on telly an hour ago, you were ready to eat somebody.’

‘I was,’ Mario replied wryly, ‘but the dish of the day slipped out of the kitchen before I could ram a skewer through him.’

‘You’ll see him again, though?’

‘Barker? No, he’s going back to London with his boss. Brian Mackie talked the fiscal into authorising the release of Zrinka’s body this morning. It was picked up from the morgue by an undertaker, and it’ll be on board their aircraft when they fly out of Turnhouse in an hour.’

‘Just as well for him, by the sound of it.’

‘If you think I looked angry, you should have seen Alan Royston afterwards. I’ve never thought of him as an emotional bloke, but he was spitting feathers. He started with “unprofessional”, “discourteous” and went on until he was using adjectives I hadn’t heard in years.’

‘Huh! That’s saying something,’ she grunted. ‘What about the million? Is that going to make problems for you?’

‘It’ll be a nuisance for Stevie and the team,’ he admitted, ‘but nothing they can’t handle. Anyway, that’s pure bloody window-dressing. I’m more worried about Boras’s attitude.’

‘You mean the barely veiled threat he made?’

‘Nah, I don’t read too much into that: he’s lost his daughter, he’s bursting with rage. No, I’m concerned because although he said publicly that he’s right behind us, I’m not sure that’s true in private. He has political clout, and if we don’t get a result soon, we may find it aimed at us.’

‘Don’t you have political clout too?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Come on, I’ve heard the stories about Bob Skinner and the new First Minister.’

‘Boras’s influence is in London, and probably heavyweight. His foundation donates to both Labour and the Tories. But maybe I’m misjudging the guy. Maybe I’m misjudging my own troops as well. We might have an arrest by the weekend, and all my concerns will be academic. But that’s not what my gut tells me: it says it’s not going to be as easy as that. So we can’t allow ourselves to be distracted by Boras: we have to concentrate on the job in hand.’

‘Good for you. Where are you now? I can hear traffic noise.’

‘I’m on my way up to Perthshire, to see the parents of the victim Paul.’

‘Alone?’

‘For now. It’s in the Tayside area, so I had to clear it with Rod Greatorix, my opposite number up there. He told Andy Martin and Andy’s decided to sit in on it with me.’

‘That’s good,’ Paula declared. ‘You’ll have a familiar face alongside you when you see them. It sounds like an unpleasant task.’

‘Telling a couple their son was half eaten by foxes? “Unpleasant” could be an understatement.’